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Crypto Daybook Americas: Litecoin Leads on Optimistic ETF Signal as Market Rallies After Powell Talks
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The crypto market is trading positively with the Fed risk event out of the way, focusing on positives such as the crypto-friendly president in the White House, the renewed upswing in Tether’s market, and the bullish Chinese New Year effect.
Among cryptocurrencies with $5 billion-plus market valuations, the standout performer is litecoin (LTC), the silver to bitcoin’s gold, which has jumped more than 11% since the early Asian hours compared with gains of 1% to 3% for the rest. It is the third-best performing of the top 100 coins in the past 24 hours, thanks to the SEC acknowledging Canary Capital’s Litecoin ETF proposal. That has opened for public feedback, a move that hints at potential approval in the coming months.
«This is the first altcoin ETF filing to get acknowledged,» Bloomberg Senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said on X, noting that the proposal is the one to make the most progress in regulatory requirements.
A potential listing could be as positive for LTC as it has been for BTC and ETH. Note that despite the price surge to $130, LTC is still well short of the $410 record high hit in 2021. Its price chart shows a constructive outlook (check out the Technical Analysis section below).
In other key developments, on-chain activity tracked by Glassnode shows a lower level of retail participation in BTC right than in November. That’s encouraging for bulls looking for cues on whether the latest move above $100,000 is sustainable. Meanwhile, Lombard Finance is becoming more dominant in the bitcoin staking space, capturing a giant share of the total BTC staked this week.
The number of Ethereum’s active addresses recently topped a March 2024 high, signaling a renewed uptick in the on-chain activity, according to IntoTheBlock data. Ether’s price has crossed above $3,200 but is yet to clear the bearish trendline connecting the Dec. 16 and Jan. 6 highs.
In traditional markets, the yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note has dropped to 4.50%, revisiting Monday’s low in a bullish move for risk assets. Those bullish on BTC may be hoping for U.S. core PCE inflation to come in softer-than-expected later today, driving the bond yield even lower.
That said, we will also get fourth-quarter GDP alongside the weekly jobless claims report. Meanwhile, European gas prices have surged to a 15-month high and could inject some volatility into risk assets. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
Jan. 31: Crypto.com is suspending purchases of cryptocurrencies USDT, WBTC, DAI, PAX, PAXG, PYUSD, CDCETH, CDCSOL, LCRO, and XSGD in the EU to comply with MiCA regulations. Withdrawals will be supported through Q1.
Feb. 2, 8:00 p.m.: Core blockchain Athena hard fork network upgrade (v1.0.14)
Feb. 4: Pepecoin (PEPE) halving. At block 400,000, the reward will drop to 31,250 PEPE.
Feb. 5, 3:00 p.m.: Boba Network’s Holocene hard fork network upgrade for its Ethereum-based layer-2 mainnet.
Feb. 5 (after market close): MicroStrategy (MSTR) Q4 FY 2024 earnings.
Feb. 6, 8:00 a.m.: Shentu Chain network upgrade (v2.14.0).
Feb. 11 (after market close): Exodus Movement (EXOD) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 12 (before market open): Hut 8 (HUT) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 13 (after market close): Coinbase Global (COIN) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 15: Qtum (QTUM) hard fork network upgrade at block 4,590,000.
Feb. 18 (after market close): Semler Scientific (SMLR) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 20 (after market close): Block (XYZ) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 26: MARA Holdings (MARA) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 27: Riot Platforms (RIOT) Q4 2024 earnings.
Macro
Jan. 30: At a meeting of the Czech National Bank board, Governor Aleš Michl is presenting his plan for the central bank to adopt bitcoin as a reserve asset.
Jan. 30, 8:15 a.m.: The ECB announces its interest-rate decision. This is followed by a press conference at 8:45 a.m. Livestream link.
Deposit Facility Rate Est. 2.75% vs. Prev. 3%.
Main Refinancing Rate Est. 2.9% vs. Prev. 3.15%.
Marginal Lending Rate Prev. 3.4%.
Jan. 30, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases Q4 Advance GDP report.
GDP Growth Rate QoQ Est. 2.8% vs. Prev. 3.1%.
GDP Price Index QoQ Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 1.9%.
Initial Jobless Claims for Week Ended Jan. 25 Est. 220K vs. Prev. 223K.
Continuing Jobless Claims Est. 18900K vs. Prev. 1899K.
Core PCE Prices QoQ Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.2%.
PCE Prices QoQ Prev. 1.5%.
Real Consumer Spending QoQ Prev. 3.7%.
Jan. 30, 4:30 p.m.: The Federal Reserve releases H.4.1 report on Factors Affecting Reserve Balances for the week ended Jan. 29.
Balance Sheet Prev. $6.83T.
Jan. 30, 6:30 p.m.: Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications releases December unemployment report.
Unemployment Rate Est. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.5%.
Jan. 30, 6:50 p.m.: Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry releases December industrial production (preliminary) report.
Industrial Production MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. -2.2%.
Industrial Production YoY Prev. -2.8%.
Retail Sales MoM Prev. 1.8%.
Retail Sales YoY Est. 3.2% vs. Prev. 2.8%.
Jan. 31, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases December 2024’s Personal Income and Outlays report.
Core PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0.1%.
Core PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.8% vs. Prev. 2.8%.
PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.1%.
PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.4%.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Rarible DAO is voting whether to grant the Rari Foundation a mandate to collaborate with Rarible on implementing multichain protocol fee collection and designing a primary protocol fee structure for NFT mints.
CoW DAO is voting on granting its Core Treasury Team an allocation of 80 million COW tokens to support liquidity provisioning, treasury growth, and product development for CoW DAO from 2025 to 2028.
Synapse DAO is voting on upgrading SYN token to CX from the Cortex Protocol and holders of both enjoy the same value.
Unlocks
Jan. 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $46.39 million.
Feb. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock about 2.13% of its circulating supply worth $261.91 million.
Feb. 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock about 1.34% of its circulating supply worth $29.53 million.
Token Listings
Jan. 30: Pepe (PEPE) to be listed on Bitflyer.
Conferences:
Day 2 of 3: Crypto Peaks 2025 (Palisades, California)
Jan. 30, 12:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.: International DeFi Day 2025 (online)
Day 1 of 2: Ethereum Zurich 2025
Day 1 of 2: Plan B Forum (San Salvador, El Salvador)
Day 1 of 3: Crypto Gathering 2025 (Miami Beach, Florida)
Day 1 of 3: CryptoXR 2025 (Auxerre, France)
Day 1 of 4: Oasis Onchain 2025 (Nassau, Bahamas)
Day 1 of 6: The Satoshi Roundtable (Dubai)
Feb. 3: Digital Assets Forum (London)
Feb. 5-6: The 14th Global Blockchain Congress (Dubai)
Feb. 6: Ondo Summit 2025 (New York).
Feb. 7: Solana APEX (Mexico City)
Feb. 13-14: The 4th Edition of NFT Paris.
Feb. 18-20: CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong
Feb. 19: Sui Connect: Hong Kong
Feb. 23-March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver, Colorado)
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
The JELLY token soared to a $200 million market capitalization in latest example of Web2 startup founders launching their own tokens.
The token was launched by Sam Lessin, a co-founder of Venmo, to bootstrap and gain traction for a new video chat app called Jelly.
JELLY is integrated into Jelly eSports, which includes features like Solana Boxes, a loot box game where players can win luxury items by spinning with SOL or JELLY tokens.
Fees from using JELLY are dynamically allocated to burning, staking, liquidity provision incentives, gamification and team support.
Derivatives Positioning
Litecoin’s perpetual futures open interest has surged nearly 20% in 24 hours with positive net cumulative volume delta (CVD) signaling net buying.
TRX, SUI and BTC also boast of a positive net CVD.
BTC and ETH CME futures premiums tick higher in a sign of traders chasing bullish exposure.
On Deribit, BTC and ETH calls continue to trade pricier than puts. Block flows have been mixed, featuring calendar spreads and short vol strategies like short straddles.
Market Movements:
BTC is up 0.86% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday to $105,190.06 (24hrs: +2.46%)
ETH is up 2.63% at $3,134.98 (24hrs: +2.62%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 1.74% to 3,826.50 (24hrs: +2.41%)
CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 3 bps to 3.03%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0092% (10.12% annualized) on Binance
DXY is unchanged at 107.98
Gold is up 0.91% at $2,778.26/oz
Silver is up 1.11% at $31.05/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +0.25% to 39,513.97
Hang Seng closed +0.14% to 20,225.11
FTSE is up 0.34% at 8,587.03
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.73% at 5,269.01
DJIA closed on Wednesday -0.31% to 44,713.52
S&P 500 closed -0.47% to 6,039.31
Nasdaq closed -0.51% to 19,632.32
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.21% to 25,473.30
S&P 40 Latin America closed unchanged at 2,336.48
U.S. 10-year Treasury is down 3 bps at 4.51%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.33% at 6,087.50
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.49% at 21,627.75
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.38% at 45,062.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 59.53 (-0.51%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.03054 (1.73%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 774 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $62.2
Total Fees: 4.82 BTC/ $494,506
CME Futures Open Interest: 170,105 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 38.0 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.80%
Technical Analysis
LTC has broken out of a multimonth basing pattern, indicating a renewed bullish shift in momentum.
Resistance is seen at $150 followed by $300, with support at $86, the December swing low.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $341.25 (+1.58%), up 0.87% at $343.86 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $291.00 (+3.26%), up 0.69% at $293 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$29.09 (+4.38%).
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.42 (+0.88%), up 0.87% at $18.58 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.22 (+2.47%), up 1.52% at $11.39 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $11.88 (+1.33%), up 3.66% at $11.88 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.26 (+2.09%), up 1.07% at $10.37 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $11.22 (+1.58%).
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $52.08 (-0.42%), down 0.15% at $52 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $89.30 (+11.4%), up 5.88% at $94.55 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $92 million
Cumulative net flows: $39.6 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.17 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$4.82 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.66 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.6 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The chart shows BTC spent by wallets owned by small and retail investors and whales.
Small addresses are currently spending $10.7 million in BTC each hour, a 48% decline from the peak of $20.6 million in November.
While You Were Sleeping
Crypto Consortium T3 Helps Spanish Authorities Freeze $26.4M Linked to Crime Syndicate (CoinDesk): The T3 Financial Crime Unit, comprising investigators from Tron, Tether and TRM Labs, helped dismantle a European crime syndicate laundering money through cryptocurrency.
Pudgy Penguins’ Layer 2 Network, Abstract, Struggles to Attract Liquidity (CoinDesk): Abstract has struggled to attract liquidity since starting up on Jan. 27 with heavy transaction volume.
Polymarket Still Skeptical of U.S Bitcoin Reserve Despite David Sacks’ Assurance (CoinDesk): The Polymarket prediction market assigns just a 16% chance that President Trump will establish a U.S. bitcoin reserve.
Bitcoin Extends Advance After Fed Meeting, Powell Commentary (Bloomberg): Bitcoin climbed past $105,000 early Thursday after comments some traders saw as pro-crypto by Fed Chair Jerome Powell at Wednesday’s press conference.
Trump Lashes Out at a Favorite Nemesis: The Federal Reserve (The Wall Street Journal): Shortly after the Fed’s FOMC press conference ended, President Trump posted on Truth Social criticizing Powell for his handling of U.S. inflation.
France’s Shrinking Economy Betrays Urgent Need to Overcome Budget Wrangles (CNBC): France’s economy contracted 0.1% in Q4, heightening urgency for Prime Minister François Bayrou to navigate political deadlock and pass a 2025 budget.
In the Ether
On Friday, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was allegedly hacked by North Korea’s Lazarus group, which drained nearly $1.4 billion in ether (ETH) from the exchange.
Following the hack, Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founder and claiming to be a major ether (ETH) holder, wrote a post on X to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on whether he will “advocate to roll back the chain to help @Bybit_Official.” Meanwhile, in an X spaces session, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou revealed that his team had also reached out to the Ethereum Foundation to see if it was something the network would consider, noting that such a decision should be based on what the network’s community wants.
Hayes’s post immediately provoked a fierce reaction from the Ethereum community, which was firm in its belief that it wouldn’t happen. Some even questioned whether the BitMEX founder was joking. CoinDesk reached out to Hayes over X to clarify his comments.
Ethereum members, like the core developer teams, are vastly against “rolling back” the network because it would override core elements of decentralization. If Buterin decided on his own that it would happen, then that would be seen as the end of Ethereum’s ethos, which heavily involves various developer teams and other community members when it comes to the health and state of the blockchain.
“Rolling back the chain would give ETH no purpose. What’s the point if you can just change rules,” said user @the_weso in a post on X.
Some outside the Ethereum community pointed to the 2016 DAO hack as an example when $60 million in ETH was stolen. The network went forward with a hard fork, splitting the old network into two, and the new chain continued on as Ethereum.
That hard fork was not a “rollback,” though; it was known as an “irregular state transition.” Ethereum technically can’t “roll back” the network because it relies on an account model, where accounts hold users’ ETH.
At the time of the hack, developers upgraded their nodes to a new client or software. Those who didn’t upgrade their nodes were still on the old chain, which became known as Ethereum Classic.
When the nodes upgraded to the new software, the stolen ETH could move from one Ethereum account address to the next.
“The ‘irregular state change’ that they implemented at the time of the DAO hard fork was this: they airlifted all the ETH in the DAO smart contracts out to a refund contract that would send you 1 ETH for every 100 DAO tokens you sent in,” wrote Laura Shin of Unchained in a post on X.
Major cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has seen total outflows of over $5.5 billion after it suffered a near $1.5 billion hack that saw hackers, believed to be from North Korea’s Lazarus Group, drain its ether cold wallet.
The total assets tracked on wallets associated with the exchange plunged from around $16.9 billion to $11.2 billion at the time of writing, according to data from DeFiLlama. The exchange is now looking to understand exactly what happened.
In an X spaces session, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou revealed that shortly after the incident, he called for “all hands on deck” to serve their clients with processing withdrawals and responding to inquiries about what was going on.
During the session, Zhou revealed that the security breach saw the hackers make off with roughly 70% of their clients’ ether, which meant that Bybit needed to quickly secure a loan to be able to process withdrawals. Yet, Zhou found that ether wasn’t the most withdrawn token, with most users instead withdrawing stablecoin from Bybit.
The exchange, Zhou noted, has reserves to cover these withdrawals, but the crisis deepened as, in response to the incident, Safe moved to temporarily shut down its smart wallet functionalities to “ensure absolute confidence in our platform’s security.”
Safe is a decentralized custody protocol providing smart contract wallets for digital asset management. Some exchanges integrated Safe, which allows users to maintain custody of their funds and has multisig functionality to enhance the security of their cold wallets.
While the exchange had reserves to back up users’ withdrawals, $3 billion worth of USDT was in a Safe wallet that had just been shut down as the wallet moved to understand the situation, according to Zhou.
On social media, Safe said that while it had «not found evidence that the official Safe frontend was compromised,» it was temporarily shutting down «certain functionalities» out of caution.
While Zhou and Bybit’s team were figuring out how to securely withdraw their $3 billion, withdrawals were mounting. Within two hours of the security breach, the exchange was facing requests to move over $100,000 off its platform, Zhou revealed.
Responding to the situation, Zhou told his security team to engage Safe to “find a better way to get this money out.” The team ended up developing new software with code “based on Etherscan” to verify the signatures “on a very manual level” to move the stablecoins back to their wallet and cover the withdrawal surge.
The exchange’s team had to remain up all night to be able to fulfill withdrawals, according to Zhou. As the exchange managed to move the $3 billion in stablecoin reserves, it was facing a bank run of “about 50%” of all the funds within the exchange.
Zhou said that since the incident, the exchange has moved a significant amount of funds off of Safe cold wallets and is now determining what system it will use to replace Safe.
Pushing to «Roll Back» Ethereum Was not Off the Table
Since the security breach, Bybit has engaged authorities. During the session, Zhou said that the Singaporean authorities took the issue “very seriously” and that he believes it has already been escalated with Interpol.
Blockchain analysis firms, including Chainalysis, were engaged. Zhou said, “As long as Bybit is there and continues to track [the stolen ether], I hope we can get these funds back.”
Notably, he revealed that pushing to «roll back» the Ethereum blockchain, which was suggested by some industry players on social media, including BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, had been on the table for some time if the community agreed with it.
“I had my team talking to Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation to see if there’s any recommendations they can offer to help. I do really thank all these guys on Twitter asking if there is a possibility to roll back the chain. I’m not sure what was the response on their side, but anything that would help we would try,” Zhou said.
When asked if «rolling back» the chain is even possible, Zhou responded he doesn’t know. “I’m not sure it’s a one-man decision based on the spirit of blockchain. It should be a work in process to see what the community wants,” he said.
It’s worth noting that a blockchain «rollback» refers to a state change that would allow for the funds to be recovered. While rolling back the Bitcoin blockchain is technically possible, such a state change on Ethereum would be more complex, given its smart contract interactions and state-based architecture.
Nevertheless, any state change would require consensus and likely lead to a contentious hard fork, drawing criticism from the community. This would likely split the Ethereum blockchain into two networks, each with its own supporters.
As for what exactly caused the hack to occur, is still unclear. Per Zhou, Bybit’s laptops have not been compromised. He said the movements of the transaction’s signers have been scrutinized but appear to have been routine.
“We know the cause is definitely around the Safe cold wallet. Whether it’s a problem with our laptops or on Safe’s side, we don’t know.,” Zhou added.
Uncategorized
Binance Research Survey Shows 95% of Latin American Crypto Users Plan to Buy More in 2025
A vast majority of Latin American cryptocurrency users—95%—plan to expand their holdings in 2025, according to a Binance Research survey of more than 10,000 investors in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
The findings show that 40.1% of respondents are expecting to buy more crypto within the next three months, 15.3% are looking to do so in the next six months, and 39.7% within 12 months. Only 4.9% have no plans to keep on investing this year.
Latin America led the world in crypto adoption in 2024, growing by 116%, according to research from payments firm Triple-A quoted in the report. The region now has 55 million cryptocurrency users, making up nearly 10% of total cryptocurrency users.
This rapid expansion has been fueled by rising asset prices, regulatory advancements, and new financial products like spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Brazil has just last week become the first country to approve a spot XRP ETF.
Market performance has also bolstered investor confidence. «Latin America is a rapidly expanding region for the crypto sector, and the results of this research reinforce what we have observed in our operations,” Binance’s regional VP for Latin America, Guilherme Nazar, said.
Binance’s research shows that half of those inquired already use cryptocurrencies for over a year, with most entering the space expecting significant returns and searching for financial freedom.
Portfolio diversification, privacy, and protecting their money were also quoted as motives to invest in the space.
Read more: How a $115M Crypto Fund With Big Ambitions Plans to Invest In Latin America
Ethereum ‘Roll Back’ Suggestion Has Sparked Criticism. Here’s Why It Won’t Happen
Bybit Sees Over $4 Billion ‘Bank Run’ After Crypto’s Biggest Hack
Binance Research Survey Shows 95% of Latin American Crypto Users Plan to Buy More in 2025
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